


see the love there that's sleeping

by namelessdeer



Category: Dororo (Anime 2019)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Lives/No One Dies, Fix-It, Gen, Reconciliation, or even a little less than typical tbh, post ep23
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 17:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19322620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namelessdeer/pseuds/namelessdeer
Summary: He thought he was fine with being a demon to people who already thought he was one.But he wasn't prepared for how it would feel, to rage and raze like a demon when someone who cared for him got hurt in the process.(Or, the best ending I could think of, given everything that already happened in episode 23.)





	see the love there that's sleeping

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first fanfic i've posted on the internet in an entire whole four years, but i guess dororo does that to a person. hopefully, enjoy.

The world roils around him. Scorching heat, the acrid scent of pitch and ash, the cracking and spitting of a thousand searing tongues devouring the place from the inside. Hyakkimaru still can't see the flames, but with each new sense another facet of them have clicked into place. He's only experienced flames on this scale a scant few times on his journey, but each time they brought death and destruction and loss.

That's okay.

They wanted him to be a demon so badly, it's only fair that he gets to destroy like one.

The fight has been going on for he doesn't know how long, but they've both landed hits on the other, are both panting and hurting and battering themselves against the limits of their stamina. The blood from his wounded hands has seeped through the bandages he'd wrapped hastily around them. There's a deep gash in his shoulder soaking into cloth and dripping down his arm, a smarting slash across his side, burns peppering the soles of his feet and up and down his legs. He's aware of it, but he's past pain: it's almost as if he never regained the sense, as easily ignored as it is, buzzing on the edge of consciousness. After all, Tahomaru is still standing: that mottled soul, so alike his own, and the two bright red sparks on his face that Hyakkimaru knows are _his_.

They tense, shift, and are about to fling themselves at each other again when a high-pitched scream splits his awareness: _"Aniki!!"_

It's Dororo. It's Dororo. Now? He doesn't have time for this! "Get away," he barks out roughly, head swinging to make sure the little soul isn't in danger - a flash, a whistling in the air, he's almost too slow to bring up his blades and block Tahomaru's next blow - he took advantage of Hyakkimaru's distraction, and suddenly the two are a whirlwind of steel again, the only two things that matter in the crumbling castle.

"Stop, you two! _Please!_ "

They both stumble at that, but it's Tahomaru who turns his head this time, voice thick with disbelief. " _Mother?_ "

"You are my sons. I cannot let you hurt each other. Please!"

Hyakkimaru lunges, and Tahomaru blocks clumsily, the sword flying out of his grip and spinning across the floor. Before Hyakkimaru can go in for the killing blow Tahomaru surges forward and grabs the twin blades at the base with his bare hands, much as Hyakkimaru had done when he first regained his arms. They grapple, growling like wild beasts, until Tahomaru brings up his leg to kick Hyakkimaru in the stomach - the breath rushing out of him with a gasp - and Hyakkimaru responds by bashing his forehead against Tahomaru's with as much force as he can bring to bear, and the two split apart, howling. Hyakkimaru stumbles backward and falls on his rear, both blades still mercifully clenched in his grasp, fresh blood spurting through the bandages wrapped around his hands.

Dororo is by his side in an instant, small hands grasping desperately at torn fabric. "Aniki! Aniki, stop, I can't lose you!" Hyakkimaru growls, struggling into a sitting position, but the little soul throws himself insistently across him: "Who cares if they have your eyes, dammit? I need you! And you need me! It's just - it's just too sad, you turning into a demon like that old guy said, I'll be anything you need, so _please_ \- "

Hyakkimaru shoves Dororo off - elbowing him in the gut if the little oof is anything to go by - and gets to his feet, wobbling only slightly as he stands. Across the room, the woman _(his mother)_ is clinging to Tahomaru, trying to prevent him from doing the same, but at the sight of Hyakkimaru standing he wrenches himself from her grip and dives for his sword where it has clattered out of his reach.

Suddenly, the castle around them groans like a living thing. The air shifts, fresh sparks of heat flying into Hyakkimaru's face. A beam tips and tumbles, and Hyakkimaru can see Tahomaru reclaim his blade and then scramble out of its way, but those precious milliseconds cost him something. Tahomaru's scream rends the air as Hyakkimaru jumps aside to avoid the clouds of embers and ash that were thrown up. Tahomaru has been pinned by the ankle; he's no longer able to move.

Hyakkimaru takes a single step forward.

"Aniki, you can't! _Aniki!_ " Small hands scrabble at his legs, but he shakes them off and runs forward with a feral yell. There's nothing in the world now that can keep him from reclaiming what is his -

\- a flash of movement and a shuddering jolt of impact stops him dead. His blade has met flesh far too soon.

"I said I would do what I must - even if it meant sacrificing my life." There is a sick warm blush of blood, spreading around the point where Hyakkimaru's blade has buried up to the place where there should have been a hilt.

"You two are my sons; how could I watch - " Her legs buckle, and Hyakkimaru goes with her, hand still clutched so tightly around the blade he has no choice.

 _"MOTHER!"_ Tahomaru screams.

"Hyakkimaru."

He stiffens, entire body locking up at the sound of her voice, faint and strained with pain, saying his name.

_If they get in my way, I will kill._

He said that - he _said_ that, so why can't he make his body move?

Her hand, mottled white and grey in his vision just like his own, raises slowly to brush a stray strand of hair from his face, then rests against his blood-spattered cheek. It's soft, and warm, and he can feel it tremble. It's nothing like his own Mama's large, rough hands, but the action is the same. It sparks a panic somewhere deep in the hollow of his chest and he flinches, but he still can't make himself move away.

This woman abandoned him. This woman fed him to the demons. So _why_ \- ?

"The moment you were born, I loved you."

A sharp intake of breath, but he doesn't know who has done it, or why. It could have been him, it could have been any one of them. Around them, the world continues to blaze, wood shifting and creaking on the verge of structural collapse.

"It didn't matter what you looked like - I loved you. I begged your father not to take you away. I have regretted, ever since, that I couldn't do anything more to save you."

_I cannot save you!_

His hands tighten, impossibly, around the blades. Blood, hot and sticky, drips down the steel embedded in her stomach and intermingles with the blood welling from Hyakkimaru's palms.

"No," he says, his voice fierce and thick and mangled - "No."

"But that wasn't true," she says, voice shaking. "I was blinded by my own grief and selfishness. Hyakkimaru. What we did to you was wrong - even to save the people. I cannot expect your forgiveness. But you must know this: you were never, not even once, a demon to me. You have always been my son." The last words are little more than a gasp. Her other hand rises, slow and painstaking, to rest on his other cheek. Then the strength drains from them and they drop, leaving an aching absence on either side of his face, and fall to the floor.

He can still feel them shaking. Why can he still feel them shaking?

In a jerky movement he lets go of the blade in her stomach and stumbles back, sending a spatter of blood droplets across the floor. Tahomaru is sobbing and shouting, a litany of desperate words, but it's distant to Hyakkimaru's ears. Something deep and gnarled and broken twists in his gut, unlike anything he's felt before.

"No," he says. He didn't know his own voice could shake like that. "No. I am a demon."

It's what everyone says, after all - everyone who should have mattered.

Footsteps, faraway like everything else, and then small arms, wrapping gently around him.

"You're not a demon," says a trembling voice, "you're my brother."

"She," he says, sounding ragged and unrecognizable, "hates me," and he flings out a hand to point at the woman crumpled at his feet, needing so badly for it to be true.

In response, the arms around him only tighten.

"She loves you. I love you."

The gnarled, twisted thing inside him snaps in two like a broken branch, and Hyakkimaru screams.

He thought he was fine with being a demon to people who already thought he was one. What was wrong with taking and raging and destroying to people who'd do the same to you? What was wrong with it, if the destruction would come to you no matter what you did? What was the point in fighting to stay human, if only a handful of people had ever treated you as one?

It was _his_ body. His. He didn't mind being a demon, if it was to reclaim what was so cruelly torn away from him. If it was to protect the only soul who stuck by him through it all.

But he wasn't prepared for how it would feel, to rage and raze like a demon when someone who _cared_ for him got hurt in the process.

The fire, the pitch and ash, snakes its way down his throat and lodges there like the pit of a peach. In a sudden sick flash of clarity he remembers another time he screamed his lungs out in the heart of a blaze, another time he almost became a demon. Mio's fading soul-flame, pure and faint in his inadequate, unfeeling arms. If he chose not to fight then - chose to stay at the temple instead of choosing to rush off in pursuit of his body - would she still be here now?

It's not something he consciously thought of before, it being _his fault_. At the time, it hadn't felt like a choice at all. Slaying demons, pursuing his body - that was what he did. Killing and taking and getting in his way - that was what samurai did. Bad things happened, and he reacted to them. He'd felt raw anger and choking grief. He hadn't felt guilt.

But he's learned a thing or two since then, about humans, about give and take, about how someone's action or inaction can sway the flow of the world.

Right here, right now, Hyakkimaru understands how it feels to make a mistake.

He adjusts his grip on his remaining blade and takes a step forward.

"Aniki, no!" Dororo lets out a small, horrified gasp and grabs at him tighter.

That's okay. He doesn't know what Hyakkimaru is about to do.

Tahomaru is silent as Hyakkimaru approaches him; the only sound is the hiss and spit of the flames, hungrier by the second, the whole world waiting in anticipation of what he is about to do.

In the end, it isn't any different from what he's done dozens of times before, seeking out and cutting down all of the red that's thrown itself into his path.

His hands tremble only a little before he plunges the blade straight down - once, twice - into the two gashes of red on Tahomaru's face, into the demonic eyes - _into the eyes that should have been his own_. Tahomaru screams and writhes in agony and then falls still, utterly unmoving but for the quick, shallow rise and fall of his chest.

"Aniki," Dororo breathes.

Hyakkimaru lets the last blade clatter out of his hand and to the ground.

He's breathing hard too; panting, in fact, and his breath is hitching in his throat, and he can't stop the trembling of his shoulders, and he doesn't understand why. He returns to the woman on the floor, her soul-flame faint and pale, and falls to his knees to gather her up in his arms. Compared to the heat all around them, her skin feels startlingly cool. It's smoother than porcelain, and he buries his face in her silken hair, clutching her as close as possible with his flesh-and-blood arms the way he couldn't do for Mio back then.

"Mama," he chokes out, and holds her so tight he trembles with the effort of it, as if he can keep her soul from dimming any further by force of will alone.

"Aniki," says Dororo, sounding sick, "we can't stay, we have to get out of here, the fire - " but the words don't register; nothing now could pry her from his arms -

"-akkimaru!"

...What?

"Hyakkimaru! Where are you? _Hyakkimaru!_ "

"...Who's that?" asks Dororo, "the old guy? No..."

Hyakkimaru dares to look up, unbelieving that this could be anything else than his ears playing tricks on him, just in time to see a large, familiar soul round a corner and come stumbling toward them.

"What the- who are you?!" Dororo demands.

Dororo sees him too - which must mean...

It's like a bucket of water has been upturned over his head, and his entire body sags with relief.

"Mama," he says, gesturing best he can toward the woman in his arms - and in that moment he doesn't know if he's referring to her, or the doctor, or to both. "Help."

There's a sharp intake of breath from the doctor as he hurries forward, surveying the situation. "She's still alive," he says. "She might still be able to survive, if we get her somewhere I can give her proper treatment - Hyakkimaru, can you stand?"

He nods. He's not entirely sure what's happening, but his whole life, there hasn't been a situation his Mama couldn't fix.

"I'll carry her out. We have to hurry - the rest of this castle could come down at any minute. Can you carry the boy?"

He's about to nod, _of course_ , when he realizes that boy doesn't refer to Dororo in this situation. He hesitates, turning to cast a look at Tahomaru, his mottled soul dimmed but still very much burning.

"Aniki," says Dororo gently, "you gotta. She loves him, too."

His fingers tighten instinctively at the thought, and then his head whips back around, a noise of protest lodging in his throat as the doctor carefully eases the woman from his arms. He works his throat for a moment but finds no words and so he turns with a growl, tamping down the familiar anger that curls in his gut. He's made his decision, already: not between his body and the people who hate him, but between his desire and the people who love him, and there's no going back on that, now. He wouldn't allow himself.

So he returns to Tahomaru's side. He flings his whole strength against the beam that's keeping him pinned, ignoring the pain that ignites across his shoulder and hands, grunting with the effort until it shifts the several inches necessary to free Tahomaru's foot. He kneels down and Dororo helps situate the unconscious boy across his back, Tahomaru's limp arms hanging down on either side of his neck, blood dripping sluggishly down Tahomaru's face and soaking into Hyakkimaru's already torn and bloodied clothes.

Hyakkimaru stands, adjusting his grip. Across the room, both his Mamas wait, the small, still one in the protective grip of the large, sturdy one he knows so well.

Around them, wood pops and groans, and in the distance there's the booming shriek of collapsing walls. They haven't a moment to lose.

He takes a deep breath and starts toward them: "Let's go."

**Author's Note:**

> i was going to have nui no kata die at first, but i just couldn't bring myself to do it, no matter how much i couldn't quite convince myself that it was realistic for her to survive. i ignored what jukai was doing with the statue cause i really couldn't think of anything.
> 
> i might write a second chapter/epilogue to this - i have some ideas - but i'm not sure if they'll actually come together, so i'm marking it as a oneshot and complete for now.
> 
> i banged this out in two sessions and i barely edited it, so some parts might be awkward. it's been legit millennia since i've actually finished something i could conceivably put up, but i saw a post speculating hyakkimaru could retain his humanity and both he and tahomaru could survive if hyakkimaru destroyed the demon eyes, and the idea just wouldn't let go of me, so this fic is the result of me maneuvering a situation to where i thought hyakkimaru would decide to do that. hopefully no one seems too ooc!
> 
> (prayer circle for all of us come monday)


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